


All Was True

by 800wordsofheaven



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dark, Depression, Drama, Gen, Perinatal mental health, Post-First War with Voldemort, Postpartum Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21658768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/800wordsofheaven/pseuds/800wordsofheaven
Summary: All of this, Petunia knew to be true of her future.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	All Was True

The child was crying again.

Petunia opened her eyes and swallowed her sigh. She’d just managed to fall asleep.

A loud snore beside her made her jump. One would think that she’d be used to Vernon’s incessant snoring, but it was a sound that a saint would be hard pressed to become accustomed to. In her less charitable moments, she thought he sounded like a dying elephant. Right now, as she lay awake, listening to the child’s continued cries, whilst her husband lay beside her blissfully unaware of the needs of anyone but himself, was certainly one of those moments.

The child stopped crying, and Petunia let go of her breath. Her body relaxed, even as her mind couldn’t. It would take her easily another hour to return to her restless slumber. Her husband’s body’s continued attempts at breathing weren’t going to help matters.

She turned on her side to face him. He lay on his back, mouth open, arms resting on his wide abdomen, rising, and falling with his slow, deep breaths. She winced at a particularly loud snort. When it had been an incredibly long day, after she’d spent most of her waking hours alone with only two young children for company, who were _completely_ unappreciative of all the effort it took to raise a small human being, Petunia thought about killing her husband.

It wouldn’t even be all that hard, really. All she’d need to do was get her pillow and place it over her husband’s sleeping face. Perhaps she wouldn’t be strong enough to hold him down as his body thrashed, yearning for just one more gasp of air. That would be a shame, a botched murder attempt. Just as likely a possibility would be that he slept through the entire thing and died peacefully in his sleep. If the angry cries of two babies hadn’t woken him up even _once_ since Dudley had been born, death by suffocation was unlikely to do it.

Petunia ran an absentminded hand over her pillow, wondering if tonight would be the night that she finally slipped over the edge. Her life wouldn’t be all that different without Vernon in it. She already did all the childminding and household tasks. There was the question of money, but she could work something out. Vernon’s recent promotion meant the company had given him and his family an upgraded health insurance package – including a generous life insurance scheme. That, plus their savings, would last her for at least a year or two. After that… she’d figure it out.

She didn’t think she’d be implicated in the murder. Many people must suffocate in their sleep, thanks to debilitating snoring. Besides, even if her husband’s death _was_ investigated, it wasn’t necessary _anything_ would come out of it. Just take her sister’s death, for example –

Petunia abruptly halted her thoughts. If she had any hope of sleeping tonight, thoughts of her sister’s unsolved murder would most certainly sabotage her chances.

Rolling around onto her back once more, she stared up at the ceiling. No, this night _wasn’t_ the night where she murdered her husband. She was certainly feeling uncharitable towards him tonight, but not _that_ uncharitable.

The child started to cry again.

She waited a moment, watching her husband’s face, hoping that this time, _this time_ he’d be the one to wake up, and settle the baby. He turned around, his back facing her.

Petunia didn’t bother to contain her sigh as she got up out of bed. As she made her way down the corridor to the boys’ bedroom, she re-evaluated her level of charitability.

***

Her Duddykins was fast asleep in his cot, cocooned in his blankets against the chill of a January night. Despite the tortured wail of another person not ten feet away from him, Dudley slept on, oblivious. Like father, like son.

Making her way to the cot on the other side of the room, she picked up the other, much smaller child. He’d thrown off his blankets in his anger at the unfairness of the world, so she picked up the top one, and made her way to the rocking chair by the window. It was the same chair that she’d nursed Dudley in, through those long, lonely nights, as her husband slept on down the corridor, completely certain that his wife would ensure the safety and wellbeing of his only son.

This chair, in fact, was the same one that her own mother had nursed her two children in. Had she been as exhausted as Petunia? Had she been as fed-up up and angry with her husband? Petunia would never have the opportunity to find out, her mother having passed away when she was still pregnant with Dudley. They hadn’t been on the best of terms, in the end – or perhaps, _ever_ – but it had been a blow to her fraying mental state. Little did she know at the time, but her mother’s death was just the first event in a cascade of happenings specifically designed to cause the most damage to Petunia’s psyche. All of which she’d had to endure in silence, by herself.

Alone. God, she was so _alone._

She leaned back in the rocking chair, holding the boy against her chest, and wrapped the blanket over them both. She ensured that he was completely covered. Petunia turned off the oil radiator installed into the wall at night, before she went to bed. There were too many reports in the newspaper of carbon monoxide poisoning to leave it on and have a peaceful night of rest. The wood under her bare feet was almost like ice, but she didn’t let it bother her, rocking herself and the child.

He was awake. He’d stopped crying the instant she’d picked him up. Speaking several words now, Harry was still a quiet boy. Unlike Dudley, who was even fussier at night than he was during the day, Harry was well-behaved. Even when he’d first come into their lives, he’d slept soundly through the night.

It had been a small mercy for Petunia, who’d barely been coping with one baby in her life. And then suddenly, she’d had _two_. All because a man had written a letter “explaining everything” – the same man who’d barred her entry to the world that her sister inhabited so naturally, all those years ago.

Resentment rose like wildfire in her chest. She looked down into the face of the child – _this child_ – who’d caused her so much suffering and anger. And grief.

Oh, the grief. Because as she gazed down at the thin, small face, crowned with a shock of black hair, it was her sister’s eyes that looked back at her.

“Go to sleep,” she murmured to the boy, holding him a little closer to her body. He still looked up at her with those damned green eyes. Those eyes held the innocence and trust of a young child, but they also held a world of hurt, and betrayal, and accusation.

Petunia knew that she’d done wrong by her sister. She knew that she’d never have the chance to fight with Lily ever again. She knew that she’d never have the gift of her younger sister’s continual forgiveness.

This was all true. Just as Petunia knew that it was _also_ true that she was going to continue to hurt Lily by hurting her son. As both he and Dudley grew, she was going to indulge Dudley more, care for Dudley more, _love_ Dudley more.

And she was going to make sure that Lily’s son, this serious, sombre boy, was never, _never_ going to know the truth about his parents. Was never going to know the truth about himself. Because by denying Harry entry into that _other_ world, that place full of magic and wonder, she was finally going to get revenge on Lily for leaving Petunia all alone, by herself, in this cold, drab place. This place that had her mother’s rocking chair, but no mother; her husband, but no partner; her sister’s son, but no sister.

All of this, Petunia knew to be true of her future.

She adjusted Harry in her lap, so that his face rested against her chest. As she listened to his breaths fall into the cadence of sleep, she ran soft, soothing hands over his back.

From downstairs in the living room, she heard the clock chime one in the morning. Here, sitting in the darkness with her nephew cuddled in a warm embrace rarely offered, Petunia finally, _finally_ allowed the tears she’d been holding at bay for the last hour to fall down her cheeks. The tears were as hot and uncomfortable as she was feeling.

She sat there, rocking herself and this innocent life entrusted to her care, crying.

She cried for her dead sister, who would’ve turned twenty-two today, were she alive.

She cried for her nephew, who she was as good as killing by denying him the love he deserved.

And finally, Petunia cried for herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything, but here’s something I wrote during NaNoWriMo 2019. This story came to me as I was listening to the two fantastic podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, produced by Ariana Nedelman, Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile, and Women of Harry Potter, produced by Ariana Nedelman and Vanessa Zoltan. I highly recommend checking them out, if you haven’t already! They do this thing in each episode where they offer a character a blessing. So, this is my blessing to Petunia Dursley, and all the women who shoulder the burden of being defined by their carer roles as wives and mothers – even though they obviously have rich, internal lives. This is by no means meant to excuse any of the abuse that Petunia and Vernon subject Harry to.
> 
> As some of you may have noticed, Petunia has some perinatal mental health issues, here. I wanted to write it a bit more broadly than the classical definition of postnatal depression. That perinatal mental health lecture in med school is useful in my clinical and creative practice!


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